Yellow Jackets fall to 14-9 on the season

Marko Rajevac won at No. 3 singles for the Yellow Jackets

April 22, 2005

Freshman Sukhwa Young fell in three sets to Chris Westerhof at No. 4 singles as the No. 28 Georgia Tech men's tennis team fell to No. 25 Florida State, 4-2, in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament. With the loss, the Yellow Jackets fall to 14-9 on the season while the Seminoles improve to 17-6 and advance to face seventh seeded North Carolina in the semifinals Saturday.

"This was a tough match for us today," said head coach Kenny Thorne. "I thought that the doubles point set a little bit of the tone and really felt like we were battling back the whole match and could never really get out ahead. We had wins from Jose and Marko which were big, but unfortuanately just weren't enough today."

The Jackets were behind 1-0 early in the match after dropping the doubles by losing at No. 3 and No. 1 doubles. Tech's Zachary Rath and Scott Blackmon lost the first match to Jonathas Sucupira and Sam Chang, 8-4 and soon after that the No. 1 doubles team of Marko Rajevac and David North lost to Ytai Abougzir and Mat Cloer, 8-4. The match between Jose Muguruza and Sukhwa Young against Westerhof and Jeff Groslimond was tied at 6-6 when the doubles were called. won the point.

Tech the score at 1-1 as No. 24 Muguruza won in straight sets over No. 29 Cloer, 6-4, 6-4. FSU fought back to take a 2-1 lead as North lost in straight sets to Abougzir, 6-1, 6-4. The Jackets once again tied the score at 2-2 as Rajevac held on to win in three sets over Sucupira, 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-3. After winning a thrilling tie breaker 16-14 in the second set to force a third set, Young could not hang on in the third set, falling 6-1.

"I was proud of how our guys fought and didn't feel that anyone gave up today," said Thorne. " A loss is a loss at the end of the day but we got some great tournament experience this week getting used to every point being big and having fans and we'll take that into the NCAA Tournament and be a much stronger team because of it."

The Yellow Jackets will now await the announcement of the 2005 NCAA Tournament bracket which will be announced on May 6.